A literary blog for all seasons.

November 2014

11/19/2014

Obituaries in The New York Times and elsewhere call former Ga. Gov. Carl Sanders a leader of "the New South." Sanders, one of several dynamic young men who transformed Atlanta into a major American city during the 1960s, died last weekend at the age of 89.

Elected after the demise of Georgia's old county "unit system," Sanders joined with Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. and banker Mills B. Lane to bring the old railroad town major league sports and prominence on the national and international scene, though never as much as Atlanta's relentless boosters claimed. Backed by Coca-Cola magnate Robert Woodruff's civic generosity, they promoted Atlanta as a showplace of racial tolerance and economic power.

Once Atlanta was roughly the same size as Birmingham. The racial moderation of Atlantans like Sanders, as well as the modernization of Atlanta's airport, put it far ahead. As the Alabama steel town crashed in racial violence, Atlanta claimed itself "the city too busy to hate."

In reality, though, Atlanta's simmering underlying racial tensions brought white flight and deep poverty shielded by the glass and steel buildings rising on Peachtree Street. Blacks gained political power in the city, and some share of the economic boom, but whites controlled most of the state's economy. Downtown died as power shifted north toward the suburbs.

The word "New South" came to define cities like Atlanta, Nashville, Miami, Charlotte, Houston and Dallas that moved beyond the region's old segregated society and agricultural-bound economy to move into "Sun Belt" prosperity. Those in the middle-class managerial class streamed from old Northern Cities to the new suburbs mushrooming upon what was once not so fertile farmland.

Yet the term orginated in the 19th century, popularized by Henry Grady, another brash Atlantan, who edited The Atlanta Constitution. Grady in a speech in New York in 1886 galvanized the term, which he didn't originate, to assure Northern industrialsts that the South had moved beyond its Civil War defeat and was ready to rejoin the nation's economy. For years, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution used Grady's speech in marketing materials, underlining Grady's comment that "we have raised a brave and beautiful city." Atlanta boosterism always floated high above reality.

That the term rose again to describe the 1960s progressive South shows the hollowness of Grady's talk. Much of the Northern investment in the South crippled it for years. The industrialists expropriated the region's resources and labor, and contributed little in return.

Through the Great Depression, the South remained mired in poverty, racial violence, ignorance and self-defeating regional pride. The historian C. Vann Woodward wrote the defining books about the conflict between Grady's vision and Southern backwardness, "The Origins of the New South" and "The Burden of Southern History."

The Democratic Party ruled that South. If anything, Democratic control was even more extensive than that held by the Republicans today. The old Democrats were generally conservative, suspicious of outside ideas, supportive of rapacious business schemes. In short, they were virtually identical to today's Republicans.

Yet, men like Carl Sanders represented a progressive strand in Southern politics. As with Sanders, who opposed the Civil Rights Act, those Democratic progressives were hampered by regionalism. Even men like Allen, who testified in favor of the civil rights act and comforted Martin Luther King Jr.'s widow, Coretta Scott King, after the civil rights leader's assassination, was marred by racism - he placed a barrier across an Atlanta street to stop integration of a neighborhood.

The expropriated term "New South" masked harsh realities. Those business types populating Sun Belt suburbs proved strong supporters of first Richard Nixon, and then Ronald Reagan, who sought to turn back racial progress. The South produced "new Democrats" like Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, notorious in Georgia for his racially edged campaign to defeat Sanders' bid for a gubernatorial comeback in 1970.

Nixon's Southern strategy turned the old Democrats into Republicans. Lincoln's old party now thrived on racial and economic polarities. It had no place for the progressives who sometimes gained power in the old Democratic framework.

As the Democratic Party's power waned, progressives turned increasingly defensive, defeatist and deferential to Republicans. Carter and Clinton yielded to Republican opposition during their presidencies. The populist, progressive rise of men like Carl Sanders, Big Jim Folsom in Alabama and "Chep" Morrison in New Orleans shimmers like a vanished dream. That confident, dynamic, progressive politics no longer exists. Lacking a dynamic agenda for the future, Democrats remain marginal in the South.

Through all of its permutations, the term "New South" was hollow, more of a boast than sustained reality. Now, whatever truth it once held is even more eroded.

11/17/2014

I saw a good chunk of the Beatles' "A Hard Day's Night" on TCM the other day, and the film remains fresh and entertaining, unlike other seriously dated '60s movies. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr's energy, seen from the vantage point of 50 years of history, still generates a glow.

Richard Lester's black and white mock documentary about the band's "Beatlemania" days marks a cultural shift. The band is appearing on a British variety show, whose other acts are from the older culture - opera, theater, even a magician. The film's lack of color illustrates a Britain still emerging from the austerity of the post-World War II years.

The new cultural elements: the Beatles' slightly absurdist humor, their music - is framed by slapstick comedy reminiscent of silent movie comedians like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. The simple gags and images look to the past, and the future, of film as a visual medium. Starr patiicularly shows silent-film appeal. Lester's style would greatly influence movies, advertising, television and the rise of music videos. Yet, it recycles the basic elements of movies that existed from their start.

So much of the older culture of the 1940s and 1950s remains in the film. Slightly older representatives of the establishment - such as Victor Spinetti's perplexed director - see the Beatles as a a puzzling passing phenomenon, a quirk of youth culture that won't last. The resistance to authority is mild and comic - culminating in the amusing police chase. Little could viewers of the movie know then how soon violent generational protests would erupt.

McCartney and Lennon flirt with women dressed like Vegas showgirls - and the screaming girls still wear conservative tweed skirts and pressed white blouses. The '60s cultural changes were still on the horizon. So were the culture's violent shift back to conservativism.

The fresh-faced Lennon's cheeky wit and natural flair for the camera raises poignant memories for those of us who followed him through his physcial, emotional and artistic changes. Seeing him in the closing credits looking through his rounded hands as if peering through binoculars was sad - was he peering at the future to come, and his tragic death? His and the world's changes happened very quickly.

Many of us mark Lennon's death as the end of our youths. "A Hard Day's Night" shows him and the other Beatles still at the start of their "long and winding road."

11/14/2014

Terry Gross' "Fresh Air" comes on at 7 p.m. over our public radio station, providing excellent after-dinner entertainment. This week, Gross offered witty, funny and poignant interviews with Richard Ford and Jon Stewart. Ford discussed his new Frank Bascombe book, "Let Me Be Frank," while Stewart talked about his movie "Rosewater," about an Iranian journalist taken prisoner by the country's fundamentalist regime.

While Ford and Stewart delved into serious artistic and human issues, they both delighted in making Gross laugh - a special treat for the listener as well. The interviews shared a common theme: the humor that co-exists with suffering and death. Both greeted Gross' most probing personal questions with trenchant, teasing wit.

"Fresh Air" has along been one one public radio's top shows. Yet Ford and Stewart's sallies with Gross still surprised me with a new realization of how big a star she is, how highly she is esteemed among cultural figures.

Gross' interviews with Ford and Stewart were conversation at its best, affirming the power of language and laughter. Such shared respect and purpose is all too rare these days. The world of Fox News, GOP client deniers and political fear mongering is one cultural strand. The interviews showed another: urbane, witty, informed, enlightened. They gave me hope, probably misguided, that these values will prevail.

Gross said that she will broadcast next week a second installment of her interview with Stewart. I've never been a big fan of Stewart and his "Daily Show," but I'll make sure to hear the rest of their talk.

11/12/2014

I'm a sucker for magazine anniversary issues. New Republic's latest edition celebrates 100 years of publishing. Always a niche magazine with a split personality of intense political debate and literary and cultural criticism, the journal has displayed enduring survival instincts, despite persistent editorial policies of self-destruction.

The 100th anniversary issue doesn't shy away from the New Republic's often bizarre history. The magazine has swung from creating American liberalism in its early days when Walter Lippmann was its mainstay to a dismal interval under Henry Wallace to neo-conservative swings under the intensely pro-Israeli editor Marty Peretz.

It's been an incubator of young writers who moved on to bigger audiences - a piece by former editor Rick Hertzberg mentions that Charles Krauthammer worked there when he was a young liberal tacking rightward. The magazine also ran the made-up articles of Stephen Glass, the most notorious of the frauds who tarnished American journalism in the 1990s.

Back in my youth, I subscribed to the New Republic, one of the several national publications that gave missives from the outside world to my shabby apartments in Baton Rouge. Looking back through the hazy years, I believe the young Michael Kinsley was the New Repbulic writer who most excited me.

Perhaps Kinsley left, or those insular political debates grew tiresome. For whatever reason, I stopped receiving the New Republic, prompting an anguished inquiry from the magazine that gave me a brief stab of guilt as if I'd betrayed a friend . Still, I stood fast, remaining with the New Yorker and, at least for a while, the Paris Review. Over the years, I've sampled the New Republic from time to time as it's veered along its wayward course.

I thank the magazine for one special gift. One night working at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, I wandered into the newspaper's library on my dinner break and found a New Republic there. Between bites of my cheese sandwich, I read an article in the magazine's "back of the book" literary pages about a poet named James Wright, whose collected work had recently been released. That piece drove me to Wright's poems, which I've loved ever since.

11/11/2014

The 100th anniversary of World War I adds meaning to Veterans' Day. Before the United States expanded the holiday to honor veterans of all wars, Nov. 11 marked Armistice Day, which ended the "great war" in 1918 after four years of slaughter.

Although American doughboys suffered greatly and made the difference for the allies, World War I never held the significance here that it did for Europe, especially France and England, which lost an entire generation of young men in the trenches.

Italy, Austria, Russia and other countries also experienced nation-shattering losses. Germany remembers World War I from the perspective of the defeated, the bitterness that led to World War II. Among the allies, Russia suffered defeat by Germany and Austria, bringing the Soviet Union's rise. Our World War I experience, while tragic, didn't shake the country to its foundations. The United States rose to the world's top economy and political and moral leader.

Our victory over Germany and Japan in World War II called the country to greater sacrifices than those of the first world war. With the Cold War building, we wanted to affirm our military power, bringing the change from Armistice Day to Veterans' Day in 1954, that strange time of economic growth, social conformity and global threat. Armistice Day was no longer enough, although we already had Memorial Day, begun after the Civil War as Decoration Day.

On this Veterans' Day, I've noted several baby boomers acknowledging their dads' service in World War II. Back in the '60s, when generational change was boiling, many of us turned away from those fathers, who went to work each day and rarely if ever talked about the war. Now, with more and more of them gone, we're raising our salutes.

These days, vets receive perfunctory, pro-forma praise. Nice that soliders go to ballgames and such and receive recognition on beer and car commercials, and but is there much substance there?

The eternal instinct is to sanctify war, to make it noble and edifying. Its reality is filth, death and horror.

To remember the men of World War I, and others, here is Wilfred Owen's famed poem "Dulce et Decorum Est," reprinted from the Poetry Foundation.

11/10/2014

I'd like to have a recording of Allen Toussaint's journey through the piano encyclopedia he performed last Friday night as part of his concert with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band of New Orleans. Toussaint began the number with a child's rendition of "Chopsticks," citing that as his first song, and showed how he's built upon that simple set of notes to reach a mastery of the piano repertoire.

A few parts of the medley I recognized: Professor Longhair, Chopin, Fats Domino, Bach, Mozart. I would love to have an identification of all of the parts, including those from New Orleans masters such as Huey "Piano" Smith.

The concert at Georgia Tech's Ferst Center for the Arts was memorable. The Preservation Hall Jazz Band played a few New Orleans numbers, and displayed virtuosity backing up Toussaint. However, splitting the bill with Toussaint meant that they didn't have time to do some of their more traditional New Orleans numbers.

They do more and more rhythm and blues from the 1950s and later, leaving less attention to classics from the 1920s and before. Yet, their performance along with Toussaint of one of the great old New Orleans songs, "St. James Infirmary," capped the evening before a spirited encour that ended with Toussaint's signature "Southern Nights."

As Toussaint exemplifies, New Orleans rhythm and blues is one of America's great musical forms. Informed by jazz, blues and Caribbean music, it perhaps can lay claim to a unique genre.

Toussaint, known for years as a songwriter, arranger and producer, now stands as one of the great performers. His stage comments complement the story-telling of his songs. As noted before, he is a piano master.

At 75, he keeps rolling on, but he wasn't the most elderly musician still swinging. That honor belongs to the Preservation Hall Band's Charlie Gabriel, going strong on the clarinet and saxophone at 81.

11/04/2014

Newspapers are in serious decline. Old-line sportswriters, though, enjoy a renaissance, thanks to ESPN and the Internet.

Longtime Boston Globe columnist Bob Ryan built a second TV career as ESPN's resident brainy curmudgeon. Even before the Internet opened local papers like the Globe to a national readership, Ryan was known as a star of ESPN's "The Sports Reporters." He later joined the cast of the at first silly then wittily conversational "Around the Horn" and frequently fills in on "Pardon the Interruption."

Before his column-writing days, Ryan made his mark as an innovative beat writer for the Boston Celtics, along with a stint covering the Red Sox. As a columnist, he's covered a wide gamut,, from NCAA basketball to the Olympics. Now retired from the paper, he returns to write an occasional piece, and enjoys an elder-statesman status on the sports network.

Now Ryan has looked back on his career in a chatty, informal memoir "Scribe: My Life in Sports." Ryan drops a lot of names and recounts a lot of games, too much detail for the casual fan. Deep sports lovers, especially of Boston teams, will feast upon his recollections and observations.